Ford Begins Production of First Mustang for Global Sale

By Keith Naughton

Ford Motor Co. (F) begins building the sixth generation of its 50-year-old Mustang sports car today at a Michigan plant that will export it to more than 120 countries.
For the first time, a right-hand-drive version will be made, for sale in more than 25 markets such as the U.K., Australia and South Africa, the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker said in a statement. The 2015 Mustang starts at $24,425, a 4.7 percent increase from this year’s base model.
Ford wants to widen the appeal of a quintessential muscle car, which has been outsold by General Motors Co.’s Chevrolet Camaro for the past four years. The Mustang, which Executive Chairman Bill Ford has called the company’s “most important product,” has long helped woo
buyers to its broader lineup. The redesign aims to meet global safety standards while retaining classic cues such as the long hood and three-bar taillights.
“It’s been designed to be accepted globally,” said Michael Robinet, an analyst at consultant IHS Automotive. “But there’s still a lot of traditional American design in that vehicle. That’s the allure of it.”
The Mustang is being built at a Flat Rock, Michigan, factory, south of Detroit, that also makes the Fusion sedan. The two cars have similar grilles but share few parts, Robinet said. If sales take off for either model, Ford could add a third crew of workers at the plant and boost annual production to more than 300,000 vehicles, from about 220,000 now, he said.

Source: Sam VarnHagen/Ford Motor Co.

The 2015 Ford Mustang rolls off the line today at Flat Rock Assembly Plant near Detroit.

“Ford now has the flexibility to turn the volume knob up or down at Flat Rock,” said Robinet, who is based in Northville, Michigan. “They have the ability to allow the Mustang to stretch its legs from an export perspective.”

U.S. Sales

Mustang sales in the U.S. rose 3.9 percent to 50,795 this year through July, after declining 7 percent to 77,186 for all of last year.
Camaro sales climbed 13 percent through July to 56,633, after falling 4.5 percent to 80,567 in 2013. The Camaro, redesigned in 2009, overtook the Mustang a year later, ending Ford’s 24-year run with the top-selling sports car in the U.S.
The Mustang’s best sales were in the 1960s, when Ford built more than 600,000 in a year.
Ford pioneered so-called pony cars with the introduction of the Mustang in April 1964, and it appeared in Switzerland in that year’s James Bond movie “Goldfinger.” Four years later in “Bullitt,” Steve McQueen’s good guy drove a roaring, squealing Mustang in an extended scene that helped redefine the movie car chase.
GM’s Camaro scored a casting coup by landing the role of Bumblebee in the “Transformers” movie franchise, which helped it attract a younger audience. The Camaro has appeared in all four of the films, in 2007, 2009, 2011 and this year.

Engine Choices

The new Mustang, which is lower and wider, comes in three engine configurations -- the base 300-horsepower V-6, a 310-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder and a 435-horsepower V-8, Ford said.
“Expanding its availability globally affords our customers around the world the opportunity to have a true, firsthand Mustang experience,” Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of the Americas, said in the statement.
The Mustang is one of 23 new models Ford is debuting this year. The automaker’s U.S. sales have fallen 0.4 percent this year through July and it has said 2014 profit will slip as it retools factories and spends to introduce new vehicles. Ford posted net income of $2.3 billion in this year’s first half, a decline from $2.84 billion a year earlier.